


let's thatch a roof (but leave a hole so we can let the stars in)

by eon_s



Series: DA:I Fics that loosely relate to each other [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blow Jobs, Body Worship, Cock Worship, Cultural Differences, Dalish Elves, Drinking & Talking, Duty, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Love, M/M, Responsibility, Self-Indulgent, Service Top, Spoilers, Tranquil Mages, Trauma, based directly on the swift pace with which my playthrough went to shit, being in power is grim, duty comes first, giving up your culture and principles for a hot piece of ass and kind of regretting it, learning to live with your choices, monologue-heavy blowjobs, practical romance, practical trauma management
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 06:08:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18309737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eon_s/pseuds/eon_s
Summary: "Imagine taking a man who has only known the soldiering life and cutting off his hands that he might never take up arms again... then you’d be close to understanding, I think."In which a mage Inquisitor has a prisoner made tranquil, and has to confront the severity of his actions. Cullen understands, and tries to help. (Or: two traumatized men in positions of power having difficulty coping with said trauma and power.)Update: lowered the rating to an M because it felt right idk





	let's thatch a roof (but leave a hole so we can let the stars in)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is shamelessly borrowed from Cosmo Sheldrake's song 'Birth A Basket' because it's too perfect not to use
> 
> Finally got around to writing something based on my modded playthrough of DA:I (featuring bi!Cullen and my really fugly mage elf bureaucrat-turned-reluctant dictator.) Poor Darmud's not the kind of person you'd ever want in charge, in that he wades into holy wars thinking only with his penis, and winds up drowning in responsibilities. (Tbh, he would just elect Josephine and Cassandra to run everything if he could and escape with Cullen to somewhere pastoral and calm.)
> 
> Also this ended up being surprisingly more upbeat (given he's still facing an inevitable breakdown at the end) than I intended it to be. But I wrote this because I wanted something self-indulgent and sad, and apparently traumatized, rambling blowjob conversations are what does it for me.
> 
> as usual I've done minimal editing right now, but if there's anything glaring i'll probably fix it sooner or later. sorry for any typos I miss.

* * *

 

_Foolhardy optimist of an elf, to look at demons and spirits and think that they made you afraid._

If that was fear, then there was no word for what Darmud felt now. How could there be something like this – more fearsome than fear? He had no word for it, not in Elvish, not in any of the tongues of Men. Fear was familiar; the anxiety of the chaste courtship he and his Commander refused to verbally acknowledge; the hideousness of demons and the way they made your mind into a weapon and turned it inwards. This was so much worse.

The monsters were external, concrete. You could kill them. Corypheus could be identified as evil, which implied the Inquisition was good. It had been good – Darmud _thought_ it had been good – until he’d chosen without a second thought –

The elf scrambled towards the edge of the battlements and was sick into the bushes beneath. He prayed no one saw – he didn’t want anyone coming to talk to him. They would tell him they respected his decision even if they disagreed, because they had to. He was their superior. _Your Worship,_ they called him, and expected him not to bow beneath the weight of it like a frost-laden tree limb _._

“Gods, how could I have –?”

“Are you –”

Darmud reeled back, eyes wide, wiping his mouth hastily on the back of his hand. He had hoped, when he recognized the voice as Cullen’s, that he would turn around and see the face he’d thought back to all through the mess that was Adamant Fortress and he would be… better? Back to normal? Instead, he felt worse.

“Cullen,” he rasped, throat hoarse from the force of his vomiting, “I recognize this will be hypocritical in light of previous conversations about forgiving oneself, but I think I’ve crossed the threshold into ‘irredeemable’ territory.”

Cullen didn’t look surprised. He simply nodded.

“Come inside. It’s not much warmer in my quarters but there’s no one to see you, if you don’t want the shame of it.”

 _I won’t judge you._ The statement was implicit in the gesture. Darmud supposed if there was anyone alive who wouldn’t judge him, it probably _would_ be Cullen, after everything that poor man had seen and done and had done to him. Mercy, it felt wrong, letting someone struggling under the strain of so much shoulder even more of the Inquisitorial burden.

Gods, but they were a sorry pair, walking with heavy steps like two men facing their executions. Cullen offered Darmud the chair and leaned against the wall by the narrow window, sighting through it like he was lining up a shot.

“There’s a bottle of wine in the chest over there,” Cullen said. “It was – I bought it. For you. For – for us.”

“To toast our survival of Adamant,” Darmud replied, unwilling to move.

“To – no. I had hoped we could share it under happier circumstances.”

Cullen pushed off the wall and squatted low beside the chest with a grunt. He collected the wine, which he tucked under one arm, and two crude cups of dull, utilitarian metal. He unstopped the cork with his teeth, spitting it over his shoulder, and poured the dark liquid into the waiting vessels without finesse. It plopped and splashed and Darmud wrinkled his nose a bit at the smell.

“Forgive me – it’s cheap even to a soldier’s palette. It was the best I could find in the moment and –”

“I can think of nothing I’d like more than to drink this terrible wine with you,” Darmud managed with a smile as shaky as his hands. He gripped the cup tighter and forced down a mouthful, if only to wash the taste of sick off his tongue.

Cullen looked as though he wanted to reply, but he settled for awkwardly clapping him on the shoulder and stiffly returning to his post by the window.

“Do you – er – do you want to… _talk?”_

Cullen said it as though the words left a foulness caught in his teeth.

“Gods, I wouldn’t even know how to begin,” Darmud admitted. “I wouldn’t want to burden you with it.”

“You wouldn’t be. I mean – I’ve… I’d understand. Try to, at least.”

Darmud nodded.

“I know you would.”

He forced another acidic mouthful of wine down his throat.

“I had him _made tranquil,_ Cullen. Gods, do you know what that _means?_ For a mage to do that to another without – without a second thought?”

“You recognized him as a threat and dealt with him accordingly. It’s not the first time a dangerous mage has had to be declawed by an authority –” Cullen countered gently, no doubt meaning to help.

“But for a mage to do that to his own kind? Gods, it would have been better if I’d killed him.”

Darmud looked down at his hands – chalk white and freckled. It amazed him, how clean they were. Not a drop of blood visible on them, though they felt caked in layers of the stuff. He was dimly aware of Cullen sighing and sitting down on the edge of his desk.

“What’s it like? To be tranquil – I mean, I know, obviously. But to a mage – what does it feel like?”

“I can’t say from experience, of course. Only… the fear of it. The fear’s so thick you can taste it – metallic and vile. Bloody paste. Imagine taking a man who has only known the soldiering life and cutting off his hands that he might never take up arms again. Imagine depriving him of nourishment until the weight of his armour crushes him into the dirt. Imagine having birds put out his eyes. Imagine deafening him with hexes. Imagine leaving nothing but a lump of flesh that still draws breath, still lives, still knows enough to know what he’d once been, but not enough to know that he should wish evil upon the heads of every ‘authority’ that so wronged him. Then you’d be close to understanding, I think. Had I ordered him killed, I would be a harsh disciplinarian, a stern leader – brutal, perhaps, but just. I could have worn that reputation with my head high. What I chose, I chose in fear, in anger, and in petty hate. I chose what he would have chosen for me – so what does that make me, but another monster lucky enough to be on the winning side?”

Cullen did not reply immediately, taking his time to consider the question.

“Honestly? You don’t have the luxury to be anything but what the Inquisition needs you to be. None of us do.”

“Right. Duty calls. Funny – if my family could see me now, they’d call me deluded. A heartsick fool. What duty does a Dalish elf have to anyone but his kin? To you? To those people out there? When I took this mantle up for myself, I underestimated how much it costs, to oversee so much. My clan seems so small by comparison to your great armies.”

“It is a heavy burden, but we bear it that others might know peace,” Cullen murmured, his own expression clouded. They each had their private litany of grief and losses to draw on.

“The people would have us be Law and Protector and Example and Weapon. When would they have us just be men?”

Darmud didn’t mean to stare at Cullen’s lips as he said it, but he did despite himself. The tart red wine left them ruddy and slick.

“Soldiers learn to take time when they can – steal moments here and there,” Cullen breathed. “Maker, the look on your face –”

“I want to kiss you,” Darmud said in a rush, “only I taste of vinegar-wine and sick. But I would kiss you other places, where my mouth wouldn’t put you off.”

“Would it help? I mean – I’m not against the idea, only I find… after I have… bad times, it can be difficult to…”

Cullen gestured unmistakeably with his hand. Darmud shook his head.

“I don’t need to be standing to give you satisfaction. Not in either sense.”

With that, he knelt, shuffling forward between the commander’s open legs.

“Would you let a villainous mongrel like me at your nethers?”

“You’re no villain. Go on – if it helps. Take what you need.”

“Not take,” Darmud insisted. “Give.”

He made quick work of the laces on Cullen’s breeches and tugged his soft length free. In the dim light of the lone torch, it was a beautiful picture of maleness. He fell to work quite literally, sagging into the task of nuzzling with the whole of his face, feeling the blood-warm organ stir and slowly rise.

It was a quiet, worshipful thing, and more tender than Darmud felt he deserved, but certainly all that Cullen merited and more. If he should have something so lovely after all he’d done, he would be sure to earn it – to show his gods and Cullen’s that there was some fragmented goodness left in him.

“Does it make it better or worse that I did all of it with you in mind?” Darmud murmured, the crooked bridge of his nose rubbing against the underside of Cullen’s prick.

“Did – what?”

“Chose the templars over my own kind. Let the mages fall to ruin. There were points in favour and against both options but the thought of you having to face down your own brothers-in-arms… I couldn’t bear it.”

“We hardly knew one another then,” Cullen whispered, voice thick with something that might have been disapproval.

“I know. Shameful, isn’t it? Betraying everything I ever believed in because I’d seen a human whose beauty knocked the sense out of me. Not your physique, either – comely as it is. Not your bonny gold hair or your shy, canny eyes. It was the bravery, the surety of your tread, and the way you put your life on the line so readily. You were the sort of warrior I grew up hearing stories about.”

“What, lyrium-addled and broken?”

“Bowed, splintered, but never broken, vhenan. We may remember the perfect heroes gone for centuries, but the warriors we want to emulate, to elevate – they are those who saw our race enslaved and _endured._ When you had me bury Haven, give us a warrior’s death, I knew I had been right to want you.”

Cullen tightened a fist in the elf’s close-cropped mop of red hair.

“And if I had any doubts as to your moral worth, they were banished when I saw you be sick into the ornamental fruit tree in the courtyard. We have blood on our hands – such is our fate. I have done my share of wrong, my very veins crave poison, yet you say you see some goodness in me, still. You have the… the audacity to call my _soul_ beautiful. If you can believe all that to be true of me, you can believe it true of yourself.”

He released Darmud’s hair and cupped his face, thumbing along the ridge and point of his ear.

“The Inquisition needs its Inquisitor. It needs him whole and it needs him sane.”

“And he needs his right hand.”

Darmud looked at the length he held and smiled tightly.

“I’ve been neglecting you. Forgive me.”

“No, it’s alrig– ah…”

Darmud hummed around his precious mouthful, sinking down until there were sandy curls all in his face. Cullen cursed and patted his head with clumsy hands. It was supposed to be different – all of it. Cullen had bought the wine to celebrate, and Darmud would have celebrated in a different time, in a different life, if the Breach had been the end of it. He would have laid the Commander down in sweet grass and meadowland and spent hours drawing patterns on his skin with honey and summer wine.

_A cottage for him with dogs and a garden, radishes and turnips and carrots and herbs, and casks of beer to drink, and great wheels of cheese. He would want for nothing._

It was too cruel a thing to hope for that now, with deaths upon deaths upon deaths, and choices unretractable. Dead empresses and dead, tranquil eyes staring, and everything so far from the forest and the plain. The gaudy human things that had fascinated Darmud once, forbidden and forbidding in turn, now made up the fabric of the whole known universe, but for where the fabric was rent. Funny – green had been Darmud’s favourite colour, once. Now, green was nothing but sickness, red was nothing but corruption.

_I’ll do the castle up in black, and all my clothing, too. Atonement. I will not bury what I’ve done. I can’t. He deserves an honest man, at least._

“Close, vhenan?”

Cullen nodded, mouth shut tight.

_Is this it? Am I your first?_

Darmud thought first. And

_O, Love. This world has run us ragged, both._

He grabbed one of his soldier’s hands and pressed them palm to palm. Cullen spilled in his mouth without warning and Darmud swallowed him down. Let the only thing in his stomach be his Commander’s seed – it felt like a healing draught when it passed down his bile-burned throat.

“You’re looking at me like I’m going to shatter into nothing,” Cullen observed, voice low and fond.

“I’m just thinking. In a perfect world, there are many ways I’d have seen you to completion. In your office after a day of bloodshed is less than someone of your calibre merits. I fear I’ve done you a disservice.”

“You’ve done more than your share of service, this night,” Cullen replied, a spark of boyish mirth in his tired eyes.

“Oh – really, that’s hardly –”

Darmud found himself laughing, too, if you didn’t mind the wetness in his eye. He sniffed and shook his head.

“Time’s up and back to work, then? The mantle of duty falls once more to our bruised shoulders.”

“No time for sentimentality these days. No time for perfection, either. But,” and Cullen blushed at this, “it is enough to know you would have offered it. If you could.”

Darmud nodded. The air was thick in a different way than it had been before. He would break before the sun rose, but he would not do it here. Instead, he rose with grace and took up one of the discarded glasses of wine.

“To better days, then.”

“Better days.”

 _I should thank him,_ he thought fleetingly. _This man has saved me from the brink._

One look at Cullen confirmed there was nothing more to say. Darmud nodded once more, turned, and walked out into the freezing dark.

 


End file.
